Our special culinary moments – both “out and about” and at home.

Cooking at Home – Week of July 16, 2012

D – Our vacation to Colorado was wonderful, but it is good to be back in Austin. Here is a sampling of our “at home” dining this week.

OK, I confess. We did not fix dinner Monday night. We arrived home around 3:00pm, cleaned up, and walked right back out the door to head off to Nick’s SPOTLIGHT ON OPERA concert at Whole Foods. We only had a little over an hour, and the WINK Wine Bar is just minutes from Whole Foods, so we made a pit stop for Happy Hour. Sorry I don’t have a picture, but I can highly recommend the BRIE BURGER SLIDERS with a lovely glass of Riesling.

On to Tuesday– Our first official night at home called for a family favorite – the Famous Tamale Casserole. This dish never fails to please the tummy – a delicious combination of cornbread, chicken, red sauce and cheese. Here is the link to the recipe from Cooking Light ( www.myrecipes.com/recipe/chicken-tamale-casserole-10000001854020 ) . The only change we made to the original recipe was to omit the green chilies.

Wednesday — I pulled out the crockpot and tossed in a couple of medium sized pieces of boneless pork shoulder with a can of root beer. Seven hours later, I took the pork out of the pot, drained the liquid, shredded the pork, then returned half of it to the pot. I then added BBQ Sauce (Sweet Baby Rays) to the pot. The other half of the pork I seasoned and served with some delectable mole sauce that I had saved in my freezer from our New Year’s Eve dinner. So now we have pork 2-ways!

It is so easy to make! I have made it both with/without the fish sauce – didn’t notice much of a difference, so now we make it without, since fish sauce is not an ingredient that I usually stock in my fridge. Just add some extra soy or teriyaki if you need a little more sauce). The red chiles are not always available at HEB, so I just use jalapeno. I also serve with Thai red chili sauce. You can add as much heat as you want that way J.